Inspector General: Russia Investigation Wasn’t an FBI Witch Hunt

Like Hitler and the Nazi regime, Donald Trump works to use two propaganda efforts to subvert the truth and to play to his knuckle dragging base.  One is to attack the independent media. that endeavors to report the truth regardless of whether or not it is popular with Trump and what Hillary Clinton aptly referred to as the "deplorables" in his base.  As a recent piece in the New York Times noted: Hitler and the Nazis had found the simple slogan they repeated again and again to discredit reporters: “Lügenpresse.” . . . .  which in English is “fake news.”  The other method is to promote conspiracy theories and outright lies.  One of the latter is Trump's refrain that the entire Russiagate investigation was a "witch hunt" and therefore should not be believed by his cult- like true believers. With the release of the Inspector General report, the Trump "witch hunt" mantra against the FBI suffered a major blow - much to the chagrin of Attorney General William Barr, perhaps, in my opinion, one of the most corrupt individuals to ever serve as Attorney General. A piece in New York Magazine looks at the inspector general report. Here are article excerpts:

Throughout both the Mueller and the subsequent House Intelligence Committee investigations of Trump campaign and administration dealings with foreign governments, [Trump's] the president’s allies have relentlessly promoted a counter-narrative full of lurid conspiracy theories. They all date back to an alleged “deep state” plot in 2016 to keep Trump from becoming president by using allegations allegedly planted by Hillary Clinton’s campaign to accuse his campaign of colluding with Russia.

A long-awaited Department of Justice report in response to these claims from Inspector General Michael Horowitz has largely exonerated the FBI of charges of political bias, while criticizing the reliance on the so-called Steele Dossier in the agency’s application for a wiretap on one key Trump operative, foreign-policy adviser Carter Page. Horowitz’s boss Attorney General William Barr is not happy about it, according to the Washington Examiner . . . . Barr made clear his displeasure with Monday’s report almost as soon as it came out.

While Horowitz suggested that the wiretap on Page was not properly secured, he views that sideshow as irrelevant to the bigger investigation and does not think it represents some sort of coordinated effort to invent a scandal designed to damage Trump’s campaign, as Politico explains in its takeaways from the IG report: . . . Horowitz found that the Crossfire Hurricane team — the codename agents gave to the Russia inquiry — did not receive Steele’s election reporting materials until after the investigation had already been opened using information about Papadopoulos the team received from a foreign ally.

Horowitz also found that the decision to pursue an investigation was above the pay grades of the “FBI Lovebirds” Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, the key figures in the right-wing counter-narrative whose emails to each other displayed hostility to Trump.

Horowitz will appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee later this week to discuss his findings, and you can be sure Republicans will make every effort to link his criticisms of the pre-Trump Justice Department and FBI to the “witch hunt” they are alleging during impeachment proceedings currently in the hands of the House Judiciary Committee. But it looks like slim pickings for those claiming that candidate or President Trump is an innocent victim of partisan shenanigans.

Yet Another Extremist Trump Judicial Nominee

Eighty six years ago Adolph Hitler began his transformation of Germany into something horrible using three means: (i) a constant propaganda campaign of lies that played on Germans' prejudices, (ii) attacks on the free press that sought to expose him for what he was, and (iii) stacking the courts with loyal Nazi judges. Every day Germans and the world ultimately paid a terrible price for the failure of Germans to oppose Hitler when they still had the opportunity to do so.  Fast forward to 2019 America and we see the Trump/Pence regime using the Hitler playbook with too many Americans to complacent to get out and vote - studies show that it was non-voters who elected Trump - or foolishly believing that since they are not among the regime's targets, there is little risk from their doing nothing. History tells us that nothing could be further from the case.  The Trump/Pence regime is busy appointing extremist to the federal courts for lifetime appointments which will harm the rights of many Americans for generations. One of Trump's latest nominees is so extreme that even the spineless Susan Collins will oppose his nomination, even as the rest of Senate Republicans act like Germans who aided Hitler and ultimately destroyed German's democracy.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Christofascist extremist who Trump has nominated for a lifetime appointment to the federal bench.  Here are excerpts:

Sen. Susan Collins said Friday she will oppose one of President Trump’s federal judicial nominees over his record opposing LGBTQ rights.

In a statement, the Republican from Maine, who faces reelection next year, voiced concerns regarding Matthew Kacsmaryk’s “alarming bias against LGBTQ Americans and disregard for Supreme Court precedents.”

“Mr. Kacsmaryk has dismissed proponents of reproductive choice as ‘sexual revolutionaries,’ and disdainfully criticized the legal foundations of Roe v. Wade,” the landmark 1973 decision legalizing abortion, Collins said. “Such extreme statements reflect poorly on Mr. Kacsmaryk’s temperament and suggest an inability to respect precedent and to apply the law fairly and impartially.”

Kacsmaryk, who serves as deputy general counsel to First Liberty Institute [a Christofascist organization] , which defends religious freedom issues, was first nominated for the lifetime appointment by Trump in 2017, and had to be renominated this year when the Senate failed to confirm him before the end of the last congressional session.

The Senate Judiciary Committee approved Kacsmaryk’s nomination in January on a party-line vote, and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has scheduled a procedural vote on the nomination next week.

LGBT and women’s rights groups are vehemently opposed to his nomination, describing him as an “anti-LGBT activist” and pointing to instances in which he defended discrimination against LGBT people, wrote disparagingly about other gay rights such as marriage and called being transgender “a mental disorder.”

“His record reveals that he will be incapable of treating LGBT litigants fairly — no matter what body of law is at issue in the cases over which he may preside — because he does not acknowledge LGBT people as having a right to exist,” wrote a coalition of 75 organizations in a letter Wednesday to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and ranking Democrat Dianne Feinstein (Calif.).

In a statement, the Republican from Maine, who faces reelection next year, voiced concerns regarding Matthew Kacsmaryk’s “alarming bias against LGBTQ Americans and disregard for Supreme Court precedents.”

In a 2015 op-ed for the National Catholic Register, he wrote that sexual revolutionaries were demolishing the four pillars of marriage law: permanence, exclusivity, procreation, and finally “sexual difference and complementarity.”

The “Catechism holds that ‘homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered,’ ‘contrary to the natural law,’ and ‘do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity,’ ” he wrote. “This view of human sexuality as male and female stands in stark contrast to the opposing definitions of marriage, sexuality and so-called gender identity promulgated by most LGBT scholars and activists.”

He also signed on to a letter that called being transgender a “delusion.”

To me, that is not someone that can be impartial to millions of people in this country who are LGBTQ. That type of demonstrated bias is not ‘he was representing someone’ or ‘he was taken out of context.’ This is his worldview. This is his bias. He has not shied away from it,” said Kristine Lucius, executive vice president for policy and governmental affairs at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, which has organized a campaign against Kacsmaryk’s nomination.

Collins, who is a top target for Democrats in 2020, supports same-sex marriage and reproductive rights. But she was criticized by LGBT and women’s rights groups when she became one of the deciding votes that secured Kavanaugh’s place on the Supreme Court.

At the time, Human Rights Campaign president Chad Griffin encouraged his members to vote out lawmakers who supported Kavanaugh, whose nomination was embroiled by sexual misconduct allegations.

Throughout Trump’s tenure, Republicans have made federal court appointments a top priority. As of Friday, the Senate had confirmed 119 federal judges nominated by Trump.

A number of these nominees have been deemed "unqualified" by the American Bar Association yet Republicans in the Senate have confirmed them as a means to pander to Christofascists and white supremacists who support Trump.  Be very afraid.

Trump, the "Lying Press" and the Nazis

As noted many times on this blog, history has many lessons it can teach us.  Most importantly, it can warn us of dangerous trends and individuals, provided we are willing to listen and not blinded by our own closed mindedness, prejudices, and often intellectual laziness.  A professor of modern German history and European History at the University of Louisiana has a piece in Salon that focuses on Donald Trump's endless lies and, more frighteningly, his attacks of the press as he pushes an authoritarian agenda, seeks to diminish American institutions and marginalize and demonize anyone who opposes him or simply reports the truth.  The parallels with Hitler's Nazi Germany are disturbing although one historian friend views Trump more as a Mussolini as opposed to a Hitler.  Let's hope that view proves correct.  Meanwhile, emboldened by Trump's rhetoric and lies, The Independent reports:

In Detroit, an armed white supremacist group called the National Socialist Movement (NSM) descended on the annual Motor City Pride Festival, where they held placards, gave Nazi salutes and displayed armbands with swastikas.

The caption of this post comes from the Salon piece which is a must read.  Here are article highlights:  

At an election rally in Cleveland in October 2016, two supporters of Donald Trump were captured on video shouting, “Lügenpresse!” What was going on? Why would people who are looking to Trump to “Make America Great Again,” be shouting a German word at one of his events? And what did it mean? The “lying press” — an idea at the heart not only of Trump’s campaign and presidency, but of his entire worldview.

The news media, Trump complains, treats him unfairly. It does not report all the positive news about his campaign and then his presidency. Instead, he insists, it lies to the public, publishing what he calls “fake news.”

Within the confines of Trump’s community of supporters, stories critical of Trump are seen as lies, as phony left-wing propaganda. They’re not to be believed. As it turns out, the use of the term Lügenpresse happens to be quite illuminating. It sheds light on a connection between Trump’s political approach and that of Hitler in the 1930s, when one also heard that word used quite often.

The term Lügenpresse has its origins in Germany during the First World War. Initially intended to counter allied propaganda campaigns (a good deal of which we now know to have actually been accurate) the Nazis used it to attack hostile media.

As with so much of Nazi propaganda, the description of an opposition press based on lies was a classic case of projection. Hitler based his whole approach to politics on lies—something he made no secret of, having described his strategy of the “Big Lie” in his memoir, "Mein Kampf." Hitler lied to officials about his party’s use of violence, he lied about his own past, he lied to foreign leaders about his intentions, and, of course, his whole understanding of the world was based on the lie of a global Jewish conspiracy. Truth would never get in the way of Hitler’s goals.

Trump is also a man who has never let the truth get in the way of what he wants to say and who projects his own dishonest nature onto others. And like Hitler, he’s made no secret of the fact that he lies — bragging to a group of Republican donors that he simply made up numbers to argue about trade policy with the Canadian prime minister.

Trump launched his political career, in fact, on a lie: the story that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States, and was also possibly a Muslim. And since assuming the presidency his dishonesty has reached breathtaking proportions. In his first 828 days in office, Trump has delivered 10,111 false or misleading claims according to the fact-checkers at the Washington Post. He needed 601 days to reach 5,000, but only 226 to make it to 10,000 — a feat that required an eye-popping average of 23 lies per day. And the topics about which he lies span the spectrum.

And regardless of how often and how definitively they’ve been revealed as lies, he continues to repeat them, over and over.

Once in power, Hitler continued his campaign against the Lùgenpresse. On the one hand, he had the newspapers of his main political opposition — the Communists and Socialists — forcibly shut down. In doing so, the police arrested many of the editors and sent them to concentration camps. . . .  the Nazis often took over the facilities and equipment in order to publish their own papers, and with them, their own version of reality.

Early on this involved an effort to counter foreign papers that reported on the violence and persecution already taking place under the new Hitler government. The regime offered instead its own alternative reality, calling such criticisms and stories “atrocity propaganda.”

Though he has not taken such extreme steps yet, Trump has made clear his desire to restrict and ultimately silence critical media sources. One of the more common themes of his Twitter activity involve attacks on various news outlets as “fake.” He repeatedly calls out and attacks journalists for critical reports or for not complimenting him. He’s belittled and denigrated reporters such as Katy Tur, Megyn Kelly and Mika Brzezinski, referred to Don Lemon as “the dumbest man on television,” called CNN a network of liars, and actually ordered one CNN correspondent out of the White House for asking a question he didn’t like.

[T]he Justice Department told Time Warner in November 2017 that it would not receive approval for its planned merger with AT&T unless it sold off CNN, a network that’s been a frequent target of Trump’s ire. The message is clear. If a media company wants fair treatment when it comes to regulations or approval of prospective business deals, it ought to think twice before airing anything critical of [Trump] the President. And this is not the only danger of a government that rejects the truth and peddles in lies.

When a regime camouflages its true actions and intentions in lies and euphemisms, it can provide cover for the most horrifying measures. The Holocaust is a perfect example. Instead of deportations to death camps in German-occupied Poland, the Nazi government spoke of "relocations" and "work camps" in the east. . . . For those who did not want to know the truth of what was really happening to their former neighbors and fellow citizens, they could choose to believe the rhetoric. How many people would want to believe that their own government was systematically murdering millions of unarmed men, women and children in their name? It was much easier on their conscience to choose a more palatable reality and therefore that much easier to justify doing nothing to stop it.

At its heart, the use of "fake news" by the Trump Administration is illiberal, anti-democratic, and in fact, authoritarian. Dismissal of critical news as “fake” implies that criticism of the president is illegitimate, inappropriate and even unpatriotic. It serves to confuse. . . . . Trump’s attempts to obliterate reasonable understanding of truth give rise to such confusion and hesitation. And hesitation allows him time to consolidate his power.

Assaults on the truth also serve to divide. On one side they pit those who choose to believe the president and therefore do not accept the reality of any news outlets critical of him. On the other side are those who understand the role of journalism in a democracy and can discern true stories from false. Those within the boundaries of the Trump media world see those fake news" purveyors — and their consumers — as hindering the president and actively working against him. They are, as Donald Trump himself so shockingly asserted in February of 2017, “the enemy of the American people.” Should anyone be surprised then when a man calls into CNN to deliver racist diatribes and threatens to “gun you all down?” Or that someone would actually deliver on such threats? Should anyone have been surprised when a gunman opened fire in the newsroom of the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland, in June 2018?

The point at which politics shifts from truth to lies, from opponents to enemies, is the point at which democracy dies.

Vote Against all Republicans. Every Single One.

A column in the Washington Post takes the position I subscribe to as a former Republican: vote against every single Republican that you can next Tuesday.  It is the only way to save the Republican Party and perhaps the country as well.  A message must be sent that the current hatred of others and general toxicity of the GOP is unacceptable and must end.  The column is written by a former Republican.  Much of the lament involves the daily parade of lies and horrible behavior flowing from the White House, but ultimately it focuses on all of the Republicans (I call them Vichy Republicans) who have thrown principle and decency - what little many had - to enable, aid and abet the most malignant individual to ever occupy the White House.  What we are witnessing is NOT normal.  Indeed, the unhinged behavior coming from the White House is more reminiscent of that of Ivan the Terrible (for Fox News viewers, that a 16th century Russian tsar), Adolph Hitler or Idi Amin.  There is only one way to stop or at least lessen it.  Vote out every member of the party that is complicit in such misogyny.  Every one possible.  The future of America literally depends on it.  Here are column highlights:

I’m sick and tired of a president who pretends that a caravan of impoverished refugees is an “invasion” by “unknown Middle Easterners” and “bad thugs” — and whose followers on Fox News pretend the refugees are bringing leprosy and smallpox to the United States. (Smallpox was eliminated about 40 years ago.)

I’m sick and tired of a president who misuses his office to demagogue on immigration — by unnecessarily sending 5,200 troops to the border and by threatening to rescind by executive order the 14th Amendment guarantee of citizenship to anyone born in the United States.

I’m sick and tired of a president who is so self-absorbed that he thinks he is the real victim of mail-bomb attacks on his political opponents — and who, after visiting Pittsburgh despite being asked by local leaders to stay away, tweeted about how he was treated, not about the victims of the synagogue massacre.

I’m sick and tired of a president who cheers a congressman for his physical assault of a reporter, calls the press the “enemy of the people ” and won’t stop or apologize even after bombs were sent to CNN in the mail.

I’m sick and tired of a president who employs the language of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about Jewish financier George Soros and “globalists,” and won’t apologize or retract even after what is believed to be the worst attack on Jews in U.S. history.

I’m sick and tired of a president who presides over one of the most unethical administrations in U.S. history — with three Cabinet members resigning for reported ethical infractions and the secretary of the interior the subject of at least 18 federal investigations.

I’m sick and tired of a president who flouts norms of accountability by refusing to release his tax returns or place his business holdings in a blind trust.

I’m sick and tired of a president who cares so little about right-wing terrorism that, on the very day of the synagogue shooting, he proceeded with a campaign rally, telling his supporters, “Let’s have a good time.”

I’m sick and tired of a president who lies outrageously and incessantly — an average of eight times a day — claiming recently that there are riots in California and that a bill that passed the Senate 98 to 1 had “very little Democrat support.”

And I’m sick and tired of Republicans who go along with Trump — defending, abetting and imitating his egregious excesses.

I’m sick and tired of Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) acting like a caddie for the man he once denounced as a “kook” — just this week, Graham endorsed Trump’s call for rescinding “birthright citizenship,” a kooky idea if ever there was one.

I’m sick and tired of House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), who got his start in politics as a protege of the “bleeding-heart conservative” Jack Kemp, refusing to call out Trump’s race-baiting.

I’m sick and tired of Republicans who not only refuse to investigate Trump’s alleged ethical violations but who also help him to obstruct justice by maligning the FBI, the special counsel and the Justice Department.

Most of all, I’m sick and tired of Republicans who feel that Trump’s blatant bigotry gives them license to do the same — with Rep. Pete Olson (R-Tex.) denouncing his opponent as an “Indo-American carpetbagger,” Florida gubernatorial candidate Ron DeSantis warning voters not to “monkey this up” by electing his African American opponent, Rep. Duncan D. Hunter (R-Calif.) labeling his “Palestinian Mexican” opponent a “security risk” who is “working to infiltrate Congress,” and Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio) accusing his opponent, who is of Indian Tibetan heritage, of “selling out Americans” because he once worked at a law firm that settled terrorism-related cases against Libya.

If you’re sick and tired, too, here is what you can do. Vote for Democrats on Tuesday. For every office. Regardless of who they are. And I say that as a former Republican. Some Republicans in suburban districts may claim they aren’t for Trump. Don’t believe them. Whatever their private qualms, no Republicans have consistently held Trump to account. They are too scared that doing so will hurt their chances of reelection. If you’re as sick and tired as I am of being sick and tired about what’s going on, vote against all Republicans. Every single one. That’s the only message they will understand.

Remembering How the Nazis Gained Power in Germany

As we see civic discourse coarsened daily by the occupant of the White House, immigrant children being held in cages, daily attacks on the free press, and the constant scapegoating and demonizing of minorities, it is critical that we remember how the Nazi regime came to power in Germany  in the 1930's. A book review of a new book, "The Death of Democracy, Hitler’s Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic," offers a sobering look at what happened in Germany in the late 1920's and early 1930's, as Germans tried to deal with devastating defeat in WWI and the Great Depression and economic globalization more generally.  Indeed, WWI itself was largely triggered by German and British competition in the global markets.  While the book does not seek to draw parallels between Hitler and the Trump/Pence regime, there are very disturbing parallels.  One is that the Nazis claimed a mandate when they won 37% of the German vote.  In 2016, Trump won only 28% of the American vote, yet he and his Christofascist and white supremacist base boast a mandate and that they represent "real Americans."  As Germany slide toward dictatorship, too many Germans sat on the sidelines, were too disinterested to act, or did not want to confront Nazi supporters when there was still an opportunity to avert disaster.  Here excerpts from the book review:

We ask about the rise of the Nazis from what we think is a great distance. We take for granted that the Germans of the 1930s were quite different from ourselves, and that our consideration of their errors will only confirm our superiority. The opposite is the case. 

Although Benjamin Carter Hett makes no comparisons between Germany then and the United States now in “The Death of Democracy,” his extremely fine study of the end of constitutional rule in Germany, he dissolves those comforting assumptions.

He presents Hitler’s rise as an element of the collapse of a republic confronting dilemmas of globalization with imperfect instruments and flawed leaders. With careful prose and fine scholarship, with fine thumbnail sketches of individuals and concise discussions of institutions and economics, he brings these events close to us.

The Nazis, in Hett’s account, were above all “a nationalist protest movement against globalization.” Even before the Great Depression brought huge unemployment to Germany, the caprice of the global economy offered an opportunity to politicians who had simple answers. In their 1920 program, the Nazis proclaimed that “members of foreign nations (noncitizens) are to be expelled from Germany.” Next would come autarky: Germans would conquer the territory they needed to be self-sufficient, and then create their own economy in isolation from that of the rest of the world. As Goebbels put it, “We want to build a wall, a protective wall.”

Hett . . . . describes a moral crisis that preceded a moral catastrophe. If Jews were held responsible for what happened in Germany, then Germans were victims and their actions always defensive. Political irresponsibility flowed from the unfortunate example of President Paul von Hindenburg. . . . . Hindenburg could not face the reality of defeat on the Western Front in 1918, and so spread the lie that the German Army had been “stabbed in the back” by Jews and Socialists. This moral weakness of one man radiated outward. . . . Without Hindenburg’s founding fiction and odd posturing, it is unlikely that Hitler would have come to power. [T]he Nazis were the great artists of victimhood fiction. Hitler, who had served with German Jews in the war, spread the idea that Jews had been the enemy within, proposing that the German Army would have won had some of them been gassed to death. Goebbels had Nazi storm troopers attack leftists precisely so that he could claim that the Nazis were victims of Communist violence. Hitler believed in telling lies so big that their very scale left some residue of credibility. The Nazi program foresaw that newspapers would serve the “general good” rather than reporting, and promised “legal warfare” against opponents who spread information they did not like. They opposed what they called “the system” by rejecting its basis in the factual world. Germans were not rational individuals with interests, the reasoning went, but members of a tribe that wanted to follow a leader (Führer). [T]he electoral rise of the Nazis in the late 1920s and early 1930s had less to do with his particular ideas and more to do with an opening on the political spectrum. The Nazis filled a void between the Catholic electorate of the Center Party and a working class that voted Socialist or Communist. Their core constituents, Hett indicates, were Protestants from the countryside or small towns who felt themselves to be the victims of globalization. In Germany in the 1930s, as elsewhere, elections continued even as their meaning changed. The fact that the Nazis used violence to intimidate others meant that elections were not free in the normal sense. And the system was rigged in their favor by men in power who had no use for democracy or for democrats. . . . . They tended to confuse their particular interests in lower wages and higher military spending with those of the German nation as a whole. Constitutions break when ill-motivated leaders deliberately expose their vulnerabilities. Certainly this was the case in Germany in 1930. President Hindenburg was technically within his rights to dissolve the Reichstag, name a new chancellor and rule by decree. By turning what was meant to be an exceptional situation into the rule, however, he transformed the German government into a feuding clique disconnected from society. . . . The Nazis took advantage of an opportunity created by people who could destroy a republic while lacking the imagination to see what comes next.

When elections were called in 1932, the purpose was not to confirm democracy but to bring down the republic. Hindenburg and his advisers saw the Nazis as a group capable of creating a majority for the right. The elections were a “solution” to a fake crisis that had been, as Hett puts it, “manufactured by a political right wing that wanted to exclude more than half the population from political representation and refused even the mildest compromise.”

The Nazis won 37 percent of the vote, and Hitler became chancellor in January 1933. A few weeks later, he used the pretext of the arson of the Reichstag to pass an enabling act that in effect replaced the constitution.

Hindenburg died in 1934 believing that he had saved Germany and his own reputation. In fact, he had created the conditions for the great horror of modern times. Hett’s book is implicitly addressed to conservatives. Rather than asking how the left could have acted to stop Hitler, he closes his book by considering the German conservatives who aided Hitler’s rise.  . . .  The conclusions for conservatives of today emerge clearly: Do not break the rules that hold a republic together, because one day you will need order. And do not destroy the opponents who respect those rules, because one day you will miss them.

Sadly, Americans know very little history and most are too lazy to educate and enlighten themselves.  Mistakes from the past can and do repeat themselves.  To avoid them, we need to know what the mistakes were and what should have been done to avoid them so that they are not repeated under similar toxic and dangerous politicians.

The GOP Now Mirror's Europe's Fascist Far Right

My Republican grandparents and even my Republican parents would not recognize today's GOP  on display at the CPAC gathering in Washington, D.C.  Indeed even during my own time as a GOP activist likely a majority of the attendees would have been viewed with outright horror given that the party base now consists of those that would not have been deemed politically, much less socially acceptable.  Sadly, as a piece in the Washington Post notes, the GOP looks more like one of European ethno-nationalist .  Ironically, one speaker attacked "European socialism" and ignored the reality that Europe now has more upward mobility than the United States, European citizens have better access to health care, and the social safety net does not view millions of individuals as disposable garbage.  Indeed, it was no accident that the niece of French far-right extremist Marine Le Pen (who has received funding from Putin's Russia) was in attendance and addressed the gathering yesterday.  Sane and moral people need to be afraid.  Here are column excerpts:

The Conservative Political Action Conference, an annual conclave of the American right, is underway just outside Washington. President Trump will deliver a speech there on Friday, while Vice President Pence opened proceedings Thursday with a paean to his boss's first year in office, a recitation of his Christian bona fides and a Republican rallying cry ahead of pivotal midterm elections this year. But it has not gone off without controversy. Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, the youthful niece of French far-right heavyweight Marine Le Pen, also addressed the gathering Thursday. Her appearance dismayed some establishment Republicans, who were not eager to associate with a political faction linked to the dark remnants of European fascism.
 The acceptance of people such as Maréchal-Le Pen and British anti-immigrant campaigner Nigel Farage, who is speaking Friday, seemed to underscore the hard-rightward drift of the Republican Party. “These are not conservatives; these are members of an international ethno-nationalist populist movement," Matt Lewis, a moderate Republican commentator, said to NBC News. But he added that this was in keeping with Trump's ultra-nationalism. CPAC has “featured speakers who raged against gays, Muslims and immigrants and, for years, it banned panel discussions about gay rights,” noted right-wing Washington Post blogger (albeit indefatigable Trump critic) Jennifer Rubin. “However, it was also a place where mainstream conservatives came to speak, and where policy gurus from think tanks had calm discussions. . . . Now CPAC encapsulates the GOP. Adherents of President Trump’s brand of Republican politics do not bother to disguise their extremism,  conspiracy theories, paranoia or xenophobia.” Maréchal-Le Pen displayed much of that paranoia and xenophobia during her 10-minute speech. “France is no longer free today,” the 28-year-old said. "After 1500 years of existence, we now must fight for our independence." She went on to bash the European Union, earning cheers from the CPAC crowd. Her remarks echoed Trump's own blood-and-soil rhetoric [first used by Hitler and the Nazi Party] over the past year. She decried what she called the scourge of immigration, bashed globalization, signaled a desire to quit NATO and cozy up to Russia, gestured at her opposition to same-sex marriage, and championed the “historical continuity” of her nation. . . . . It’s still hard to see what she gains at home by addressing this audience abroad: Public opinion polling regarding Trump in France finds widespread disapproval of the American president, even among National Front voters. . . . . She is also closer to her grandfather, Jean-Marie Le Pen, the National Front's founder who has a long record of Holocaust denial and other bigotry. More mainstream politicians on the center-right are aping Le Pen’s brand of identity politics. That is a phenomenon all too familiar to those watching Trump's America and the events unfolding in Washington this week.

America Is Hurtling Toward the Breaking Point

A piece in U.S. News & World Reports from a couple of months ago laid out a frightening reminder of how democracies die and draws parallels between Adolph Hitler and Donald Trump's attacks on the free press and independent media.  In both cases, claiming the press is lying and attacking news outlets is a key mechanism in duping an intellectually lazy and/or bigoted populace into giving up their civil rights.  Here are article highlights:

[Trump] and his advisers fomented Lugenpresse – the concept of "lying press" made famous by the Nazi party in Germany during Adolf Hitler's rise to power -- to undermine journalists covering his presidential campaign at every stop. Voters shrugged. Now, nearly a year into his administration, those efforts are bearing fruit. Nearly half the country believes the media lies and makes things up about him, calling into question their reliability on everything else as well. . . . . The process was accelerated by Facebook and Google, two companies that control information access for millions of people and allowed fake news to be presented, unfiltered, to voters around the country.

Social scientists long ago established an unfortunate truth about history: We are condemned to forget its most important lessons - and it can happen in just one generation. We are now witnessing this forgetfulness again in nation after nation. White privilege, anti-immigration fear and economic and national insecurity are upending political systems around the world with no end (yet) in sight.

We are now more than a generation away from Nazi Germany and the roots of the conflict that precipitated World War II. New generations have forgotten how and why the Nazi party rose to absolute authority in Germany. When we forget, what worked then will work again.

Today, in the U.S., we are just one nuclear confrontation away from becoming a nation where martial law and a military-controlled mass surveillance state will be viewed as a relief by many citizens. Destroying the media's credibility plays an important part in making that scenario a reality.

To put it very simply, there were five basic, highly effective moves that allowed Hitler's rise:

First, the Nazi party allowed a coarse, uneducated leader to rise to prominence on a white privilege, nationalist wave. Second, the conservative establishment party foolishly thought it could appease him by sharing power. Third, that same Nazi party destroyed media credibility to silence critics. Fourth, the Nazis literally burned the establishment congress to the ground. Fifth, it seized authoritarian power by using unchallenged propaganda to precipitate an existential threat allegedly emanating from those outside the white Aryan race and outside the nation's borders.

It is the third stage – destroying the credibility of the mainstream media -- – that's happening right now, and the Politico/Morning Consult poll shows it's working. Whether it continues to work in the next one, two or three years is still very much an open question . . . But if this third stage works, and if GOP leaders allow it to stand, then the fourth and fifth stages we saw in Nazi Germany aren't all that far behind. 

The second half of successful propaganda – the "national education" of the people by the government, as Goebbels so accurately portrayed it - relies on a confluence and collaboration between the state and mass media that voters consume. When mass surveillance of the people successfully manages to deliver lies as truth directly to those willing to consume and believe such lies, then the circle is complete.

It is in the context of this disturbing phenomenon that a column in the Washington Post makes clear that America is hurtling towards the precipice and that a significant portion of the population is either oblivious to the danger - think soccer moms and those who say they ignore politics - or fueling its success by watching fake news outlets like Fox News and Breitbart.  Here are column highlights:

Can our government function normally when President Trump tweets about his “button” being bigger than that of an armed adversary? Can there be business as usual when the word “insane” is being applied with increasing frequency to his actions, and when one of his most loyal supporters has called a meeting between Russian operatives and Trump campaign officials “treasonous”?

Only a few days into the new year, there is a striking disconnect in the nation’s capital between the ordinary and the mind-boggling — between the sorts of transactions politicians routinely make to keep the country running and displays of the irrational, the abusive and the menacing emanating from the White House.

There has been an inclination over the past year in both politics and journalism to separate Trump’s tweets and other outbursts from the realities of governing. The idea is that his eruptions are either (a) largely irrelevant forms of his letting off steam or (b) signs of a brilliance beyond the comprehension of mere mortals. What looks to most of us like madness is cast as genius in setting up enemies, signaling his base or distracting us from one thing or another.

But we are past the time when we can believe any of this. Trump is, without question, doing enormous damage to the United States’ standing in the world, and his strategy for political survival is rooted in a willingness to destroy our institutions.

While the news on Wednesday understandably focused on Stephen K. Bannon’s treason comments in a new book by journalist Michael Wolff, 2018 has already produced two remarkable essays explaining the genuine threat the president poses to the nation’s foreign policy interests.

Susan Glasser, writing in Politico, offers frightening detail about how Trump’s stunning lack of knowledge and his indifference to his own obliviousness have led diplomats to label him “insane,” “catastrophic,” “terrifying,” “incompetent” and “dangerous.” Glasser concludes: “When it comes to Trump and the world, it’s not better than you think. It’s worse.”

And Evan Osnos’s carefully reported and much-discussed article in the New Yorker demonstrates how Trump’s policies — but also his pathological focus on himself, his ignorance, and his astonishing susceptibility to flattery — have profoundly weakened the United States’ position in Asia and played into Chinese President Xi Jinping’s reach for international power. . . . And its [a Chinese think tank] analysis uses a term from feudal China, “jiatianxia,” to define Trump’s approach. It means “to treat the state as your possession.”   This insight cuts to the heart of the peril the president represents to our democracy and the rule of law.

Directing the prosecution of political enemies is a habit of autocrats. As Benjamin Wittes, my Brookings Institution colleague, wrote recently, Trump is “normalizing for an entire political movement the politicization and weaponization of law enforcement and intelligence.” Is this the legacy the Republican Party wants? While we sit back and wait on special counsel Robert S. Mueller III to issue his findings, we pray that regular governance will be possible because there is no other choice.

Yet doing so means continuing to absorb Trump’s blows to our system and to our country’s influence around the globe. It also requires great faith in our capacity for restoration despite the readiness of the president’s allies to place his survival above the health of our polity.

[W]e must face the fact that Trump is accelerating us toward the breaking point. No matter how confident we are in our resilience, we should not imagine otherwise. Not even Mueller has a button on his desk he can press to get us out of this without scars.

Be very, very afraid.

CDC Lists ‘Fetus,’ ‘Transgender’, "Diversity", "Evidence Based" as Forbidden Words

One of the hallmarks of Nazi propaganda - when not vilifying targeted groups, especially Jews - was to work to erase people and terms from public discourse.  This effort went hand in hand with Adolph Hitler's and Joseph Goebbels' view (now practiced daily by Fox News and Breitbart), that if one lied often enough, the public would come to believe the lies as truth. Reports are now coming out that the Trump/Pence regime has directed the Center for Disease Control ("CDC") to cease using words that conflict with the regime's antiscience, anti-abortion, pro-discrimination agenda.  Two banned phrases sum this up: "evidence based" and "science based" are now verboten.  Along with this, of course, are other terms not popular with evangelical Christians and white supremacists, words like "diversity."  Frighteningly, just like in Germany as Hitler rose to power, much of the public is oblivious to what is happening.  The Daily Beast looks at this propaganda effort.  Here are excerpts:

Policy analysts working at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were told on Thursday about a list of forbidden words being imposed by senior CDC officials, according to a report in The Washington Post. The forbidden words are reportedly “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” “fetus,” “evidence-based,” and “science-based.” Alison Kelly, a senior leader in the agency’s Office of Financial Services, reportedly led the meeting and did not say why the words were being banned.

The cited Washington Post story provides in part as follows:

In some instances, the analysts were given alternative phrases. Instead of "science-based" or ­"evidence-based," the suggested phrase is "CDC bases its recommendations on science in consideration with community standards and wishes," the person said. In other cases, no replacement words were immediately offered.

The question of how to address such issues as sexual orientation, gender identity and abortion rights — all of which received significant visibility under the Obama administration — has surfaced repeatedly in federal agencies since President Trump took office. Several key departments — including Health and Human Services, which oversees the CDC, as well as Justice, Education, and Housing and Urban Development — have changed some federal policies and how they collect government information about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans.

HHS has also removed information about LGBT Americans from its website. The department's Administration for Children and Families, for example, archived a page that outlined federal services that are available for LGBT people and their families, including how they can adopt and receive help if they are the victims of sex trafficking.

The longtime CDC analyst, whose job includes writing descriptions of the CDC's work for the administration's annual spending blueprint, could not recall a previous time when words were banned from budget documents because they were considered controversial.

The reaction of people in the meeting was "incredulous," the analyst said. "It was very much, 'Are you serious? Are you kidding?' "  In my experience, we've never had any pushback from an ideological standpoint," the analyst said. 

"Community standards and wishes" is a indirect way of saying "Christofascist standards and wishes."  Be very afraid.

Is Trump Abusing Power to Retaliate Against the Media?

If one has studied the rise of Hitler and the Nazi regime in Germany in the late 1920's and early 1930's one knows that among Hitler's first acts were efforts to silence the independent news media which was reporting the truth about the Führer.  A free and independent press is one of the most important safeguards against tyranny - something well know to the Founding Fathers and why they enshired freedom of speech in the First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution.   Now, troubling reports are coming out on how the Trump Department of Justice - perhaps better called the Department of Injustice under Jeff Sessions - is seemingly retaliating against CNN by blocking a merger involving that channel's parent company.  He has likewise been sniping at the parent of the Washington Post, another news outlet that has put publishing the true ahead of loyalty to Der Trumpenführer.   Many, including members of Congress and in the media, find this effort by Trump/Pence/Sessions alarming.  A piece in Politico looks at this apparent attempt to silence the independent press.   Here are excerpts:

Even critics of AT&T’s proposed mega-merger with Time Warner expressed alarm Wednesday at allegations that President Donald Trump's Justice Department is intervening in the deal for political reasons — namely his oft-expressed complaints about CNN.

"Any indication that this administration is using its power to weaken media organizations it doesn’t like would be a profoundly disturbing development," Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) said, after POLITICO and other news outlets reported that the DOJ had been pressing the companies to unload the Time Warner-owned news network.

Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) told POLITICO that the DOJ's reported actions "merit investigation," and that senators should ask Attorney General Jeff Sessions about it next week.

"Presidential power must be used wisely and fairly. I don’t know the details here but this is worth investigating," Schatz tweeted earlier in the day. He added: "The burden of proof is on the Justice Department to establish that there is no political interference in their Antitrust Division."

Sources familiar with the proposed merger told POLITICO that the DOJ issued an ultimatum to the companies Monday — that they either sell Time Warner's Turner Broadcasting, which includes CNN as well as networks like TBS and TNT, or shed satellite television provider DirecTV. The sources said it's clear the real sticking point for the government is CNN, whose coverage of the administration has become a frequent target of Trump's anger.

The two sides appear to be preparing for a court battle should DOJ reject the merger.

The DOJ officials offered no details about what aspects of the deal concern them. But they said simply selling off CNN would not necessarily solve the harm to the public.

Trump, who has repeatedly derided CNN's coverage of his administration as "fake news," has loomed over the deal since the companies announced it a little over a year ago.

But Trump's contempt for CNN's coverage of his presidency — and his other media-bashing — is casting a shadow over the government's review. Trump has often expressed a desire to punish media outlets whose coverage he deems unfair, promising on the campaign trail to “open up” the libel laws and suggesting in October that NBC News' nonexistent broadcast license should be revoked.
 Late Wednesday, Trump administration officials denied any White House interference in the DOJ's review of the AT&T-Time Warner deal.
 Politics should play no role in these types of decisions, free-speech advocates said Wednesday.

“While there are plenty of good reasons to oppose AT&T’s Time Warner takeover, punishing CNN for trying to hold this administration accountable isn’t one of them," said Craig Aaron, president of liberal group Free Press, which opposes the AT&T-Time Warner deal. "No matter where you come down on this merger, everyone should agree that the government shouldn’t base antitrust decisions or FCC rulings on whether it likes a newsroom’s coverage." 

Be very, very afraid.

The Test of Nazism That Trump Failed

The previous post looked at the manner in which many Americans allow themselves to be come white supremacists by default., often as the live their lives in all white neighborhoods and send their children to mostly lily white private schools.  They pretend to themselves that they are liberal and open minded, yet go to the polls and vote Republican election cycle after election cycle even as the Republican party pushes an agenda that seeks to disenfranchise minorities and slash the social safety net for the lest fortunate whom they often equate with those with darker skin colors. Donald Trump had an opportunity after Charlottesville to reject racism and Nazism, but failed the test.  A column in the New York Times looks at Trump's failure and what it says about both Trump and those who continue to support him.  It's a short step from quietly accepting racism and homophobia to Nazism. Here are highlights:

“No. 1, I am the least anti-Semitic person that you’ve ever seen in your entire life. No. 2, racism, the least racist person.” So the president said at a news conference in February. These words left me uneasy. A moment ago, as I was looking at photographs of young men in Charlottesville, Va., who were from my home state, Ohio, and thinking about the message “Heil Hitler” on the T-shirt that one wore, it dawned on me why.

I spent years studying the testimonies of Jewish survivors of the Holocaust and the recollections of their rescuers. When the rescuers were asked why they did what they did, they usually avoided the question. If they ventured a reply, it was simply to say that they did what anyone would have done. Historians who read sources develop intuitions about the material. The intuition I developed was that people who bragged about rescuing Jews had generally not done so; they were, in fact, more likely to be anti-Semites and racists. Rescuers almost never boast.

I write these lines in Poland, where the Holocaust is present in every absence, in a house where the Polish Nobel Prize-winning poet Czeslaw Milosz spent his summers when he was the same age as the young men I see in those photographs.

“We know ourselves,” . . . .  “only insofar as we have been tested.”

Until we have been tested, there is no sense in boasting of our goodness; afterward, there is no need. After Charlottesville, President Trump faced an easy test, and failed. When presented with an obvious opportunity to condemn the evil that was and is Nazism, he first waited, then equivocated, then read from a teleprompter, then relativized. He spoke of “very fine people on both sides.”

The Nazi groups that marched in Charlottesville cannot be considered a “side.” When they carry torches, they imitate Nazi rituals. When they perform the call and response of “Trump! Hail” and “Victory! Hail!” they are translating Nazi performances that we know better in German: “Hitler! Heil!” and “Sieg! Heil!” In Charlottesville, American Nazis shouted “Sieg! Heil!” as they passed a synagogue. When the supporters of the alt-right chant that “Jews will not replace us,” they recapitulate the Nazi idea of a world Jewry that stifles the master race and must therefore be removed from the planet. When they shout “Blood and soil,” they repeat a Nazi slogan signifying that races will murder races for land without mercy and forever. These views do not define a “side,” but rather a worldview in which the United States of America, with its Constitution and laws, and with its hard-won daily understandings of rights and responsibilities, would no longer exist.

Hitler and his henchmen strategically defined themselves, from the outset, as a “side,” as the defenders of the system against the other “side,” the left.  . . . . In power, Hitler assimilated all opponents to the other “side” and had them sent to camps or killed. When Germany’s parliament, the Reichstag, burned, Hitler had already established in his rhetoric that the other “side” was violent, and he used the (false) claim that the other “side” had committed terrorism to bring the German republic to an end.

The president has failed when no failure can be innocent. He has provided American Nazis with three services, for which they have thanked him: He has normalized their ideology; he has excused their actions; and he has given them hope that he will blame his opponents the next time America is struck by terrorism.

A writer for The Daily Stormer (a website that takes its name from the most anti-Semitic newspaper of the Nazi period) called Charlottesville a “Beer Hall Putsch,” referring to an early attempt by Hitler to seize power. The writer’s meaning was that the events in Virginia were an early failure that promises later victory. American Nazis dream of another Reichstag fire, a moment of terror in which the president will show his true colors and his opposition can be crushed.

We might choose to forget these slogans and these events from the years before World War II, but American Nazis remember the history in their own way, and so does President Trump. The Confederate statues he admires are mostly artifacts of the early years of the 20th century, when Hitler admired the United States for its Jim Crow laws, when Mr. Trump’s father was arrested at a Klan rally, before America passed its test. The presidential slogan “America First” is a summons to an alternative America, one that might have been real, one that did not fight the Nazis, one that stayed home when the world was aflame, one that failed its test.

That America might yet become our country. Whether or not it does now depends upon us. We are being tested, and so we will come to know ourselves.

Each of us who supports liberty for all and equality under the law must resist daily the forces that Trump has chosen to embrace.  If we fail to do so, we are little better than the "good Germans" who turned a blind eye to Hitler's horrors and genocide.